Hitting the bottom of ice addiction and getting back up

"I was sitting in the cells and thinking 'why am I doing this?' My youngest son was 18 months at the time and I couldn't remember what he looked like and I started crying and I thought 'I don't want to go through this again'," he says.

Mr Iokum had been in and out of the courts and jail many times before this moment.

He'd also taken a lot of drugs, including the methamphetamine ice.

However it was the thought of his young family and the example he was setting for his sons that helped him break the cycle of crime and drug addiction.

After his release from jail in 2007, he stopped taking ice and starting training in community services at TAFE.

Now he's a local justice worker at Lakes Entrance Aboriginal Health Association and it's his job to try and stop other members of the Koorie community from going down the path he once travelled.

Mr Iokum says more recently ice has become readily available in the small Lakes Entrance community.

He says because of the low socio economic status of some Indigenous people in the area, they are sometimes the biggest users and the hardest hit by the drug.

"With the Koorie people being disadvantaged as it is, it's just made it ten times worse.

"If people aren't feeling well, the lifestyle is not that good so you have a little bit of ice and all of a sudden the world's your oyster, everything is fantastic. Until the come down and that's when the problems start," Mr Iokum says.

The problems he sees stemming from the use of ice include everything from problem gambling and alcoholism to violence and family breakups.

Mr Iokum says for the most part those who become ice users have to lose everything before they decide to make a change.

"They've got to come to their own realisation that it's time to give up," he says.

Mr Iokum has seen the efforts of governments and health services so far when it comes to combating the spread and use of the drug.

He says lasting change will only happen when ice users themselves are involved in the process.

"We need a lot more awareness but not just through statistics. Get some people on board who have used it, who can speak to the people out there," he says.